At 04:43 PM 6/5/2003, stevem_at_gator.net wrote:
>Boy, I wish that was true of my unit. It barfs at 55% on my
>320kpbs-encoded MP3s.
>
><groan>
>
>Yes, I'm a bit of an extremist about sound quality, too - even on a JBR
>20. I'm loathe to give up any kbps. But, heh, 128 or 160 or 170 is better
>than nothing. And when I play the 320 kbps and the battery's down to half,
>I start getting long silences and 'confused' hard drive reads.

if you can consistently hear the difference between a LAME "--preset
standard" mp3 (average 170-190K) and a 320K mp3 you must have incredible ears.

i say this as an audio engineer and musician who listens to mp3's all day
long through a $500 digital soundcard into a digital mixer into
studio-quality flat frequency response monitors.

also if you're listening through the archos built in headphone output, that
is going to compromise the sound much worse than the lower bitrate mp3
encoding.